Tanks in the Woods. Armored vehicles can get stuck in the woods. Try to stick to road movement orders for armored vehicles when moving through woods. If you have them, use foot infantry (non-mechanized/non-motorized) to clear woods...IOW send infantry first in close terrain and armor first in open terrain. (redmarkus4)

Artillery & Mortars:

Shifting Pre-planned Targets. When you shift any one of the three targets available to an indirect fire observer, the delay time of impact and/or the probability of dispersion of the impact area can change depending on the observer's experience, the observer's view of the target area, and/or the distance of the target from the observer. (wodin)

Firing your On-map Mortars:

1. Set your mortar platoon up in dead ground or behind woods, houses etc. 2. Place the Platoon Commander within command range but with a good field of view in the expected direction of the enemy. 3. When you spot a target press the G key or click the Fire on Ground command button at the far right of the UI. 4. Put the cursor over the target and click to set a point target or drag to set a linear one.

Your mortars will commence firing almost immediately and will continue firing until ordered to stop or until their ammo runs out. To end the fire mission, right-click on the Fire on Ground command button. (redmarkus4)

With on-map mortars and artillery, a platoon commander does not require a direct line-of-sight (LOS) to the desired target area to be able to fire (though it does help to have a LOS to improve accuracy and effectiveness). To cover the blind spots that exist behind hills or tree lines, or to harass and/or interdict potential avenues of enemy approach, it is often useful to use the G hotkey to fire your mortars or artillery at the target areas outside of a platoon commander's LOS. Without a direct LOS, accuracy will suffer immensely and will quickly lead to a major expenditure of ammo. In addition, your indirect fire on-map assets must be within the firing unit's maximum effective range to the target area or your rounds will fall well short of their mark. (Dane49)

Blinking Icons (Tactical Phase) (lavish):

These icons give information of fire intensity / suppression (same colors as in status bar) or state of your units:

If you can, place your infantry deep inside the woods and order them to hold fire. Once tanks enter the woods (or built up areas), your infantry have a much better chance of taking them out. Don't order an assault or attack - just leave your infantry in defensive mode. Your infantry will take on the AFVs without orders once the enemy's vehicles approach them. (redmarkus4)

Ammo Conservation. Some units will use ammo so quickly you might want to consider using the cease fire button for some of your tanks & guns to control their fire rate so they don't burn through ammo. If you don't, they will burn through their basic load in a few minutes. Use the cease fire button to keep 37mm AT guns from firing on KV-1's at 500m where they definitely won't have any effect. (apd1004)

Unit Repair. Damaged vehicles are repaired by repair platoons. A repair platoon includes several repair teams. Each team can repair one vehicle or a single heavy weapon per turn (4-8 man-hours). Repair teams automatically repair vehicles and guns up to 2 squares away (on the operations map). For an encircled platoon, the distance is one square. Damaged vehicles and guns cannot be used in battle if they are under repair. Vehicles can also be repaired by their crews. A four-man tank crew with 25% experience: 0.5 man-hours; 50%: 1.3 man-hours; 75% 2 man-hours. A six-man gun crew with 25% experience: 0.8 man-hours; 50%: 2 man-hours; 75% 3.2 manhours. An exhausted (or wounded) crew works much slower. An encircled squad works 2 times slower. (Dr. Jones)

Movement:

Waypoints. Use the SHIFT key to add multiple waypoints to an existing movement order. You will see the cursor change to include a "+". Left-click to set the first step and then press the SHIFT key to set additional points. (stian)

You can combine different types of orders: - Move to a point in column formation - then Attack another point in line formation (stian)

You can use the ~ key to cycle through command circles and orders, blue lines show movement orders, red attack etc. (stian)

Vehicle Immobilization:

All vehicles, especially light armored or wheeled vehicles should avoid woods, villages, entrenchments and shell craters if at all possible for fear of becoming immobilized. If you must maneuver through these terrain obstacles it is imperative that you use the road movement command. It is also necessary to properly space your vehicles during road movement if in a large convoy to keep them from bunching up when encountering or traversing bottle neck terrain features such as bridges, villages or forest entrance approaches. If you don't spread them out, they will all try and traverse the entrance or approach to these areas at the same time and result in some immobilized vehicles as they all try and jockey for position and get stuck in the surrounding terrain. (Dane49)

Hunt, Recon, Assault, Attack. What do those commands actually do? Here is a short explanation:

MOVEMENT TYPES - Move: unit will move in a formation straight to the ordered location. - Attack: unit will move in a formation to the ordered location, but they can change their movement vector and take initiative. Unit may try to change position for better LOS or flank or chase the enemy. It's all controlled automatically by their A.I. - March: Unit moves in a formation directly to the ordered location and takes defensive positions around that location. - Defend: Unit moves to the ordered location as fast as possible without formation and takes defensive positions. This includes going inside the houses! NOTE: You can give this command for units during deployment phase also. When active in deployment phase, you can see a jagged line in front of them (red or green). Red means they cannot dig in and will spread around taking defensive positions using environment. Green means they can dig in and make trenches in that position (only in deployment squares with no dashed line).

FORMATION AND FORMATION DENSITY - You can change the type of formation that unit(s) try to use when carrying movement orders - Note: do not use formations in villages or your units may get stuck.

MOVEMENT MODIFIERS: these can modify the movement order you gave to your units. - On road: All units move on roads or take easiest movement path. Good for fast long-range movement. And for vehicles. - Vehicles on road (included in the new MAY 2012 update onwards): Only vehicles will use roads or easy routes. Does not have an effect on infantry. Ver, very handy in villages and forests! - Hidden/Stealth: Units try to move and stay hidden by using terrain and foliage to their advantage. Infantry will move by taking short dashes and fire less. - Fast: Units move as fast as they can and they fire less. During night vehicles will turn on their headlights to be able to move fast. Note that moving fast will increase fatigue of your infantry. Also moving fast on snow, or on bad terrain makes your infantry momentarily out of breath - this is indicated by the blue movement line turning grey. - If both hidden/stealth and fast modifier is enabled, your units will move as fast possible using hidden routes. When enemy contact is made, they start moving only by using hidden/stealth modifier effects, but will keep moving fast if they are not under fire/threat.

Also, remember that no matter what command you issue to your units, they will always have some kind of A.I. taking care of them. You can also attack a position by using any movement command depending upon whether you want to give your units the freedom to act on their own--or not. Try not to micromanage your units. (lavish)

Post your tips or links to tips here (from the various forums that support this game) and I will roll them up into the first master post above in the appropriate place. Maybe there's a useful supplement to the game manual that can be built here one post at a time.

redmarkus4 has several more very helpful "how to" tutorials you might want to link.

Thanks shrek. I'll be sure to look for them. It will take a while for me to read through all the posts in the several AP:OS forums. If you have links to these tutorials handy, I would be happy to post them.

Another helpful hint for on map mortars or artillery,your platoon commander doesn't actually have to have a direct line of sight to your target area to be able to target it.Though,it does help by having a LOS for accuracy and effectiveness.Many times I've used the G hotkey to fire my mortars or artillery at target areas outside of my platoon commanders Line of sight(LOS) to cover blind spots behind hills or tree lines or to harass or interdict potential avenues of enemy approach.But,without the direct LOS ,accuracy will suffer immensly and quickly leads to a major expenditure of ammo.Also,your indirect on map assets must be within the firing units maximum effective range of the target area or your rounds will fall well short of their mark.

redmarkus4 has several more very helpful "how to" tutorials you might want to link.

Thanks shrek. I'll be sure to look for them. It will take a while for me to read through all the posts in the several AP:OS forums. If you have links to these tutorials handy, I would be happy to post them.

They're all on the first 3 pages of this forum, with the subject in capital letters, can't miss it.

It's a good idea,once you've mastered the basics of movement,artillery and support weapon fire principles,to take a look at the controls page for commands(hot key commands) not on or easily recognized on the user interface.There are a few decent choices there including- forbiding certain units from firing on certain targets ie...Infantry or airplanes.This helps with not allowing your AT capable weapons from firing on infantry when they should be targeting armoured vehicals.There is also a forbid fire command,where your units will hold fire till you expressedly order them to fire(great for ambushing tanks with infantry)that is assuming your units are in command range of their leader.There is a stealthy command where your units will use cover and concealment as they advance on their target.Plus a few others I've just started to experiment with .I found that in the attack that I can issue the defense command to my assaulting units and then choose the area I would like them to Defend/Assault,and they will then attack the objective using fire and movement,where half the squad will advance while the other half will lay down covering(or Bounding) fire and once they reach the objective(assuming that they are still alive)They will take up a defensive posture and not go off pursuing the retreating enemy while my support weapons and leaders get a chance to move up and help consolidate my new holdings.There are lots of different commands you can combine into your initial orders that make this game a joy to tinker with.One day I hope to see an AI that can be programed to be more responsive to its situational awareness so that a multi player aspect will never be necessary unless prefered.But,I've yet to see a truly decent AI in any game of this type.So for the time being,I guess this is as good as it can get.

http://narod.ru/disk/53936615001.411bcff8db3543ccdbb0203bb3a7db80/Achtung_Panzer_Ostfront_Kharkov.exe.html Very decent winter uniforms mod.Added equipment with attention to detail and more realistic and cooler looking uniforms.BE AWARE!When using ths mod I have yet to be able to save a game while using it(enabled in updater).So if you don't plan on playing thru in one sitting it's best to disable in updater before starting the Winter campaign Operations.Also if mod is enabled you will only get winter uniforms on the summer map Volokonovka DLC,so you will have to disable for quick battles as well when playing the summer DLC.So,in essence.This is only a mod to be used during Winter Quick Battles,with no option for saving your game.With that said,I still find it a great mod and hope the devs are able to incorporate these uniforms into the Core game with some sort of patch to alleviate the need to disable it,when playing campaigns or Summer maps.There is going to be an update in the near future for the Winter mod according to the Russian APOS community,along with a new Summer uniform Mod as well.The ingame stock uniforms are OK,but the modded ones are much more realistic looking as far as looking worn and used,and the squads have more variety in uniform style and equipment too.While the stock uniforms look new ,crisp and everyone in the squad pretty much wears the same thing.

All vehicals,especially light armored or wheeled vehicals should avoid woods,villages,entrenchments and shell craters if at all possible for fear of becoming immobilized.If you must maneuver thru these terrain obstacles it is imperitive that you use the road movement command.It's is also necessary to properly space your vehicals during road movement if in a large convoy to keep them from bunching up when encountering or traversing bottle neck terrain features such as bridges,villages or forest entrance approaches.I found if you don't spread them out some,they will all try and traverse the entrance or approach to these areas at the same time and result in some immobilized vehicals as they all try and jockey for position and get stuck in the surrounding terrain.I personally have no plans on doing a video tutorial.I've yet to master the game,and with each new update and patch(which have been quite frequent over the last 6 months)I find I have to re-learn the game all over again(albiet not from scratch).Not that I'm complaining,the game has improved immensely with all the new changes and features.And Graviteam does an excellent job of trying to make their customers aware of all the new features and changes that have been added to the game recently, along with their plans and ideas for future DLC's and updates.With I might add,at very little or no cost to the customer.I find this very refreshing,considering that they are a small team of developers based in the Ukraine and English is not their mother language.They visit the Graviteam forum frequently and try to answer,at least to the best of their ability all of their customer concerns or problems with the game.Also, considering they have to use a language translator to do so. some answers may be a little difficult to understand because of the translation software(Bing is horrible!!).